Anyone committed to truly examining the shape of personal faith, unfolding over the years in a broken world, should sense a fruitful opportunity, if not a solemn obligation, to expound at length
[Winner] probes these depths as deftly and eloquently as anyone writing today
An instant spiritual classic.
In present-tense, lyrical essays . . . [Winner] explores her emotional landscape as she struggles to move beyond the depression that plagues her following her mothers death and her own divorce. Examining feelings of grief, failure, and doubt . . . Winner brings poetic nuances to her exquisitely crafted prose.
Winner possesses a flair for narrative and a willingness to use her lifes story as an easel. . . . Like Anne Lamott (Traveling Mercies), or Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love), Winner is at her best spinning small but hopeful meditations on lifes imperfections.
Lauren Winners brave, spare, and subtle book is a great gift to the church. She lifts up doubt and absence with enough honesty to reveal the unfinished edges, and the radiance, of faith itself.
Winner grabs Gods hiddenness by the shoulders and will not let go. She knows the grace that can only be learned when we stand with Moses, staring into the raging waters, and hear a voice say, The LORD will fight for you; you need only to stand still.
Still water reveals depth--as does this account of ordinary life and what lies beneath.
An unusually painful story, told with rare honesty by an unusually gifted writer.
Not for the faint-hearted, Winners book not only undresses and confronts doubt, but imparts new courage to trust God through it.
Winner is one of those gifted teachers who slips in some wisdom along with the sweet stuff on the spoon. We take our medicine from the ancients, the Christian mystics and the scriptures while tasting the sweetness of her narrative.
In an age when it is much easier to make fun of the church than to love it ... Winner has made the church a main character so honestly drawn that we recognize it ... treasure it and laugh in amazement that God can work with it. Still.
Still is about losing the connection to God, or Jesus, and then getting that connection back.
Despite deep pain and doubt, Winner relentlessly searches Gods mysteries, seeking peace and authenticity in her faith. Her spiritual memoir is unblinking, credible, and compelling.
Compulsively readable, direct yet never indiscreet, Winners book shows intelligence and verve as it seriously addresses the spiritual crises around Gods apparent absence or silence, as faced by many. A must-have for Winners readers and fans of Anne Lamott.
Lauren Winners prose is insightful, honest and always right on point. In each best-selling book, the Duke professor reclaims previously cliché-laden topics and has developed a new vocabulary for a generation fed up with conventional answers.
Titles to pick up now... Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis: insights on spiritual uncertainty from a devout Christian convert.
Elegantly written . . . eminently readable.
The book is made to pour over again and again. Youll fill the pages with underlines, the margins with notes. Each short chapter is loaded with insights that dont so much build on one another as weave a rich tapestry of possibilities in the midst of a spiritual desert.
[A] provocative memoir . . . an open, honest contemplation of a spiritual impasse.
Winner writes thoughtfully and eloquently about finding herself in the middle and accepting her place there.
Still grasps for faith in a Middle space and discovers a stranger, bigger and more faithful God than we expected.
Soft and vulnerable, yet blunt and veracious . . . If youre a lover of books like Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott or any other writers who are not afraid to unveil their imperfections in hopes of finding kindred spirits, then take this walk with Winner.